National Press Review, January 21

After talking with the Governor’s Adviser of the National Bank, the Adevărul headlines on the front page that ‘2011, will be a more difficult year than 2010’.

Adrian Vasilescu asserts that Romanians’ incomes are not about to come back to normal, this year either.

‘The bouncing ball’ is in Governments’ court and depending on how they are going to play it, either Romania will get the chance of a new beginning or the meltdown will go worse.

We need a year or two to achieve a positive economic growth in order to notice households’ good results.

Adrian Vasilescu foresees that ‘, if in 2011, we achieve a positive economic growth, it will be directed to two targets: exports and investment’.

‘The great “orange” recalculation: only dust and powder over military’s pensions’, this is outlined by the Jurnalul Naţional that exclusively got information from a clerk who worked on archiving documents on computer, related to the way military’s pensions were recalculated.

Keeping his identity unknown, the clerk describes the chaotic way that was used to work and I quote: ‘there are files lacking certificates and recalculation was done pell-mell, under tension and at least but not last it was done by old people without experience in computer using and who counted on some records from which the figures could barely be distinguishable.

‘There where situations in which not even names could be seen clearly and some files were awfully handwritten or the pages were deleted’.

‘We worked with a very old program, made hastily which had to register information from about twenty computers at every shift and which was working very bad’, I end the quote.

‘Looking for lost years’ is the Adevărul’s headline according to which lacking evidence, regarding seniority, determined the drop of military’s pensions with fifteen to fifty per cent.
Unsatisfied with these hastily recalculation, retired army announced for January, 24, the greatest retired people‘s protest ever seen in Bucharest.

While authorities did not manage too well with the computers for recalculating pensions then there was announced an e-mailed ballot casting, in 2012.

According to the Gândul, this initiative belongs to Teodor Baconschi, Foreign Minister, who firstly thought about the ballots of Romanians who live abroad.

According to the forecast made for the Gândul by leaders and officials of PDL ( the Liberal Democratic Party), between three and five million Romanian people represent the eventual election pool abroad, out of which among 500,000 and one million people could cast a ballot after advertising the e-mailed voting.

Yesterday, President Traian Băsescu announced the supplementation of projects aimed to strengthen the devotion of Romanians abroad for their own country.

The România Liberă informs us about ‘how the catalogue can decide pupils’ allowances’.

‘After cutting down the allowance to support low incomes families, government decided not to grant allowance to those pupils who have more than twenty truancies or who have less than mark eight for bad behavior.’

‘The executive considers that only this way will stop school dropout which mostly happened in poor families’.

‘The same Government saved money for something else than for abroad travels.’
The România Liberă adds that ‘The General Secretariat of Government prepared a contract regarding the purchase of air transportation services to some five hundred travels for government employees to fifty big cities in the world, most of which are for Paris and NewYork’.

Translated by: Cristina Anamaria Maricescu
MA student, MTTLC, Bucharest University